Fragility
by Llassah
Summary: From fictionalley's valentine's day challenge. An antilove story, about the fragility of human hope and aspiration, set in Azkaban, with Merope Gaunt as the main character.


(A/N This was written as part of the OTP challenge over at fictionalley. It is really an experiment in a love story that could never happen. The sentence for the challenge was 'A Dementor is stupefied by Merope Gaunt', which fired up my imagination. Be warned, this fic is not a cheerful or even particularly romantic fic.)

It had been in Azkaban since the fortress had been set up, in 1336, after the Witch Burnings that led to a series of revenge Muggle killings. These particular killings were so inexplicable to the Muggle world that, in accordance with the Treaty between the Wizards and Edward III, an unusually sensible man for a Muggle, an inescapable prison for the wrongdoers was created. It had been captured, using a powerful magic that made its sightless eyeholes burn and its claws clench in agony, and its pale, scaly skin slick with the sweat of resisting it. It was promised an eternity of feeding on souls without fear of interruption, and it had agreed, grey tongue tasting the truth of the promise, and the fear of the one that had made the bargain.

The bargain had been kept. So many souls to feed on, so much hope, happiness, joy, even in the truly evil ones. Centuries bled into each other, in a protracted feasting that kept it glutted. Until now. It stood in the cell, confused. This new prisoner, this unfamiliar one to which it had been assigned was…different. He had no hope, or light. No happiness to feast on, not even of his childhood, or of love. Madness, pride, hate and bitterness were the only things pervading this ones crazed mind, and the Dementor was left with nothing to suck out of the man, nothing to make him cold and defeated, because the man was in a diamond cage of his own creation.

It was fascinated. Fixated upon the man, in a way that it had never been before. It stayed outside the cell, from the moment the man had been brought in. It drank in the peculiar hissing the man made, the scrabbling around on the floor, the staccato bursts of laughter that would turn into harsh, wheezing coughs. It relished his smell, the sour sweat, a musky animal scent with a curiously reptilian quality. It tried, in vain, to suck something, anything from this man that would nourish it, sustain it, but it was no good. The Dementor hovered, and waited. It did not know why.

Then, one day, a man came. A man who shone with happiness, calm, warmth, hope. A man it could not touch, protected by serenity as its prisoner was protected by madness. The man came and unlocked the cage. Memories poured out of its prisoner, swirling about the cell, all bright and glistening in the dank air, and the Dementor could see through the prisoner's eyes, see the dusty floor, the shed snakeskins, his father, his hands, thick-palmed and grimy. Her. The sister. The prisoner thought her ugly, stupid, but to the Dementor, she is everything. The promised feast, such a shining filigree mass of hope and frailty. Something that would sustain it for all eternity.

The Dementor is transfixed. The Dementor is Stupefied by Merope Gaunt, and can do nothing but watch. It watches as she grubs among the pots and pans, as she is hit, spat on, insulted. As she sees the handsome, proud Lord, and hopes with the desperation of one clinging to a life raft that he will take her out of this hut, out of the grimy shadows, and to a place where she can be beautiful. As she pretends to be a highborn lady, and sticks out her little finger as she sips her brackish water, pretending it is tea. It watches the ember of her hope transformed into flames and knows the hope will be quenched. She needs no Dementor, to stifle her dreams. All this one needs is life, reality.

The Dementor stays in the prisoners memories, trapping him in the past, forcing him to relive the same fragmentary glimpses of her over and over. It only vaguely registers when the harsh, wheezing coughs become deeper, blood spattered, and the prisoner's chest rattles even when he breathes normally. The memories become distorted, fever tinged, spiraling down until all it sees through the prisoner's eyes is her face, a single tear, a livid bruise across her cheek, then…Nothing.

The Aurors come to bury Morfin Gaunt. The room is cold, so cold that ice has made the corpse's hair brittle. They do not notice the cobweb-wisps of a viscous grey substance, clinging to the blue-tinged skin, or the black mercury-like cloak in the corner of the cell. They wonder at why the Dementors refuse to go near the cell, though, and why one of their number is missing. The cell stays deserted after that. It reminds the cold, evil guards of how easily the food they so love can trap them in a net of human sentiment. It reminds them of how easily they too can fall.

Fin


End file.
